1. Technical Field
Aspects of the exemplary embodiments generally relate to providing a multi view image display apparatus and a control method thereof. More particularly, the exemplary embodiments relate to providing a glassless multi view image display apparatus and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
As electronic technologies are developed, various types of electronic devices have been developed and have been widely distributed. In particular, a display apparatus, such as a TV that is one of the most commonly used home appliances, has rapidly developed in the past several years.
As a display apparatus has a high level of performance, types of contents displayed on the display apparatus have variously increased. In particular, a stereoscopic display system through which 3-dimensional (3D) contents may be viewed has been developed and distributed.
The stereoscopic display system may be classified into a glass type system and a glassless system, according to whether 3D image viewing glasses are used.
As an example of the glass type system, there is a shutter glass type display apparatus. The shutter glass type system refers to a system that alternately outputs left and right eye images and alternately opens and closes left and right shutter glasses of 3D glasses that a user wears, together with the alternately outputting of the left and right eye images, in order to provide a 3D effect to a user.
The glassless system is also referred to as an autostereoscopic system. A glassless 3D display apparatus displays an optically divided multi view image and projects different view images to left and right eyes of the user by using a parallax barrier technology or a lenticular lens in order to provide a 3D effect to the user.
The number of views supported by a glassless 3D display varies, but views between about 7 and about 9 are supported. However, since there are not many contents having many photographing views, and the number of views necessary for a 3D display varies, and a format converter for converting a content captured into a general format into a format supported in the 3D display is required. The most general format is stereo in 3D. The format converter generates the number of views appropriate for an output display by using an input stereo image. In order to perform this work, t a stereo matching (or disparity estimating) work for calculating a pixel correspondence between a pair of stereo images and a rendering work for generating the number of views necessary for a display by using a calculated disparity image and an input image, are required. In brief, a pixel is shifted by an amount proportional to a distance between an input view and an estimated disparity so as to generate a multi view.
Since such a pixel shift amount is directly related to a depth recognition of a human, there is a need for a method of appropriately controlling an amount of a pixel shift to improve display performance.